The Kabocha Squash Tempura with the "Rialto" cocktail at Mua Restaurant in Oakland, Calif., is seen on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012.

The Kabocha Squash Tempura with the "Rialto" cocktail at Mua Restaurant in Oakland, Calif., is seen on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012.

Photo: John Storey

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Mua review: Music, eclectic decor match the food

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Sitting at the end of a bar (there are three) alongside a bronze bust with a female mannequin's leg coming out of its head, it occurs to me that Mua may have never felt so serene. On this rainy Thursday afternoon, this former nightclub, now a full-service restaurant, is clocking in at 65 decibels. It was cracking into the 90s when I checked my sound meter the previous Friday evening.

We had been encouraged by our dinner waitress - wearing a "Misfits" T-shirt - to come in for the green bean sandwich ($10). She feigned ecstasy recalling its ingredients.

We're digging the well-crusted, but still light fried calamari and hot peppers ($8) as well as a squishy-crunchy po' boy stuffed with soft-shell crab and coleslaw ($12). But the green bean sandwich, with its heavily buttered and grilled bread, kale pesto, and provolone cheese, is more oily than sublime.

What was interesting about our Friday dinner and the booming, grinding music (nightly DJs typically start spinning at 8 p.m.), was that almost everything we ordered struck us as ponderous. Rich duck confit ($17) melted into cheesy polenta. Braised lamb cheeks ($11) were sticky and one-dimensional. Even the mussels, in a thick tomato broth with limp french fries, tasted heavy.

In the new book, "Taste What You're Missing," author Barb Stuckey, a Bay Area food consultant, points to evidence that constant background noise, like engines on an airplane, dulls your perception of sweet and salty. So it makes sense that the driving beat might have sent our taste buds underground.

My two favorite dishes, a sweet and airy kabocha squash tempura ($7) and a toasty grilled romaine Caesar ($9), would probably shine in a mosh pit.

When owners and artists Hi-Suk and San-Ju Dong closed Soizic in Jack London Square a couple of years ago, they took over the space next to then-1 1/2-year-old Mua and called it Nex, a lounge serving more stylized European fare. But all shifted late last year when they opened for lunch, combined the two restaurants into one and said farewell to longtime chef John Mardikian, who opened his own restaurant, Telegraph, in Oakland. San-Ju now makes the final decisions in the kitchen.

The once large, now huge, Mua pulses with Hi-Suk's modern abstract wall art, graffiti, random handiwork and an industrial framework best viewed from the second floor balcony. Softer elements include flickering candelabras, potted flowers, twinkling stars and, most of all, servers who are palpably personable and energized by the environment.

Eu-Ri, the 23-year-old daughter of the Dongs, who works as a manager, told me that Mua is a play on a Korean word and means "another world." The crafted cocktails, huge beer selection and French-influenced wine list (check out the crisp Sancerre, $11 a glass), help alter perceptions, but the music and eclectic decor provide a shift of consciousness all on their own.

And the Dongs are always changing Mua in ways big and small. Take the attitude of that mannequin limb, for instance.

"The leg has been switched out a couple of times," says Eu-Ri. "I like how weird things just sort of happen here."